[1][2][3] Directly after the killing, Didier telephoned a succession of newspaper editors in order to organise an ad hoc press conference, meaning that the police had no difficulty in locating him.
[5] Christian Didier was born at Saint Dié, then a small and relatively isolated industrial town in the Vosges foothills to the south-east of Nancy.
Later, testifying at his trial in 1995, Marie-Thérèse Didier, his mother, described a troubled childhood and youth, characterised by failure at school, rejection by girls and possible employers, and suicidal concerns.
Based in Paris, he rubbed shoulders with stars such as Salvador Dalí, Charlie Chaplin, Richard Burton, David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Romy Schneider.
[11][12] An early publicity stunt involved walking the 300 miles from Paris to Strasbourg in 1980 with an unpublished book of memoires concerning his travels in Australia under one arm.
[13] Still keen to promote his book, during the later 1980s he made several bizarre television appearances, drawing attention to himself in studio chat shows by bursting in front of the cameras and making one of his increasingly familiar "Achetez mon livre!"
[10] Nevertheless, in 1989, he was rewarded with an invitation to appear on TF1, France's leading television channel, in a programme devoted to "those whom the telly makes mad" ("... ceux que la télé rend fous").
Didier was tried, found guilty and sentenced, for illegal possession of a firearm, to four months in prison, after which he was referred for further psychiatric treatment,[13] then returned to his mother's modest apartment in Saint-Dié.
[10] (Jean Moulin was a high-profile résistance hero for whose torture and death – officially a suicide – Klaus Barbie was widely blamed.
[14]) Subsequent commentators – albeit in most cases only after the killing of René Bousquet six years later – have said the court should have taken Didier's actions at the Prison Saint-Paul much more seriously.
Bousquet at this time was under criminal investigation in connection with his wartime activities: according to at least one source he faced "imminent trial for crimes against humanity".
[17] Didier explained that he was a document courier with papers from the Interior Ministry that urgently needed to be delivered to Bousquet, thereby gaining admittance to the building.
[18] The deed having been done, he walked to the nearest Metro station and made his way across the city to Les Lilas,[15] where he had booked a room in the Hotel Paul-de-Koch, a small and somewhat run down establishment.
[19] Didier told the police (with journalists still present) that his health and intellectual faculties had recently deteriorated, and that he had thought the time had come to deliver a spiritual message to the western world, in order to give a sense of purpose to his life.
Didier's own testimony alternated between cool lucidity and a series of repetitive and barely coherent mystical allusions to a "divine mission", "visions in the forest" and "voices".
[13] After six years and eight months behind bars, Didier was released early, "for good conduct", on 24 February 2000 from the detention centre at Toul where he had spent much of his sentence.
[13] Back in 1993, Didier's trial had attracted extensive press coverage, and following his sentencing a support committee was set up, comprising various "patriots" and those representing wartime deportees to the death camps.
In his well received 2010 debut novel HHhH, Laurent Binet mentioned Didier, identifying him as the "spectaculaire abruti" (loosely, "eye-watering cretin") who had deprived France of the "trial of the century".
[24] In a biographical book on René Bousquet published the previous year, Minc had described Didier as "fou" (loosely, "crazy", "mad").
Didier had thereby invoked the criminal law rather than launching a civil claim, and under these circumstances the defendant in the case was the book's publisher, Éditions Grasset.
[26]) Didier's final written piece, a short autobiographical volume entitled Fugaces traits de plume… en roue libre!